Partners

I’m not even sure what to say about Real Housewives of Orange County anymore. They fight, they drink, they have plastic surgery. Rinse, repeat. That’s really all that happens, and I feel like we’ve already cycled through those narrative arcs so many times this season that I can’t even imagine what might happen during the second half. Actually, wait, yes I can: more fighting, drinking and plastic surgery.

And that’s exactly what happened last night. Tamra got her boobs downgraded, everyone got drunk while they went bowling and Gretchen’s random friend made a scene in an attempt to be like that one drunk psychic lady who acted a fool on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Except, of course, this was Orange County, so it wasn’t as entertaining or as effective.

We began the episode with Heather and Tamra, who were at Heather’s mansion, discussing last week’s mud run and planning a bowling party to be featured later in the episode. The hitch, of course, is that Heather wanted it to be a COUPLES party, which was a suggestion of the producers, I’m sure. Unfortunately for Heather, Tamra, who is the only person capable of refereeing Vicki-Gretchen fights, is getting her implants yanked out and won’t be able to go to the party.

Speaking of Vicki, Tamra and Heather (well, mostly Tamra) both think that this Brooks thing is bullshit. Tamra thinks that Brooks is a smooth-talking opportunist looking to profitably insert himself into the life of a woman who’s desperate for any kind of male affection and attention, and let’s face it, she’s probably right. Brooks is laying it on thick for a man who can’t even bother to pay his child support, eh? Heather was right, though – complain too much about your friend’s man and see which of the two of you sticks around longer.

We then cut to Brooks and Vicki having a quickie lunch date, during which Brooks gave Vicki her daily card, told her he’s totally committed to her and then asked her for a rundown of how much she was going to be able to keep in the divorce. Vicki dutifully ran down her balance sheets, including the value of some of her properties and what kinds of accounts she would be keeping. She quickly followed all of that up by telling us that Brooks has full access to all of her email accounts, her phone, whatever. Um, Vicki, can we have a chat for a second? Just girl to girl. I’ll pretend that I don’t hate you for the next few sentences.

NEVER GIVE A MAN YOUR EMAIL PASSWORDS, YOUR PHONE PASS CODE, ANYTHING. I don’t care if you’re married to him, if he’s financing your entire lifestyle, whatever. Brooks doesn’t appear to be either of those things, so there’s no earthly reason that you need to give up every last drop of your personal privacy and private information to him. That goes doubly for everything in the audience, even the dudes. Getting married to someone is not the same thing as selling yourself into servitude, and if your spouse can’t trust you to have your own email account that they can’t monitor all day, every day, than they don’t actually trust you at all.

We then moved on to Heather, who was making the requisite phone calls to invite everyone to her bowling party. The only thing worthy of note was Alexis’ excuse for not showing up: apparently her nose job was like hella deep, you guys, and she can’t bend over for at least the next four days. Alexis knows that Heather’s husband is an extremely successful plastic surgeon, right?

Speaking of Alexis, we then followed her to San Diego, where that TV station is still letting her flail about in front of a live audience. Her outfit for the day was Just Cavalli, the Robert Cavalli diffusion line, and really, that couldn’t have been any more perfect if I had written this show myself. In case anyone was wondering if Alexis’ on-air skills had improved with time, they had not. She’s still illiterate, in addition to being unable to remember anyone’s names or pronounce any word with more than four letters. But it’s totally ok, you guys, Alexis took a journalism class in college. She’s totally got this handled.

Speaking of problems performing, Gretchen was up next and she continued to lay the groundwork for why it is that she can’t sing. She yelled at Vicki at that party like eight episodes ago, which is still totally making her hoarse, and that’s why the vocal coach she went to visit looked at her like she had four heads once she started doing scales. Gretchen is a bad singer. She’s not as bad a singer as Alexis is a broadcaster, but that’s faint praise if I’ve ever given it. Somewhere outside, a dog was howling and Bravo had to remove it from the scene it post-production.

We moved quickly from Gretchen to Tamra’s surgical appointment, before which Eddie seemed to be disappointed that Tamra wasn’t getting smaller implants put in. Tamra didn’t seem to care, though, so good for her. No one should complain about what foreign objects you are or aren’t having shoved into your body, but ultimately, Eddie’s hesitation was fairly mild. Can you imagine Tamra’s ex-husband in that same situation? No, you can’t, because he would have forbade her from removing them to begin with.

Checking in with an even less encouraging couple, Alexis and Earth Jesus went out on a date. He made a big show of allowing Alexis to order his meal for him, which just read like he was too lazy to deign to speak to the waiter himself. Talk launched into Jim’s dissatisfaction with Alexis’ wifely duties pretty quickly, during which he spouted some nonsense about how once a couple is married, they are one flesh, and one flesh means that the woman doesn’t work. I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t say that in the Bible, but I’m also pretty sure that Earth Jesus has never read the Bible. (He thinks he wrote it, after all, so why should he?)

The upshot of the conversation was that Jim wants Alexis to leave her gig at the San Diego Fox affiliate so that he never has to interact with his children again, and although it would probably be for the benefit of the news-watching public to have Alexis off the air, that’s not a command for Jim to give. Rather, in a healthy relationship, it would be a conversation had between two equals about what they each can do to pick up the slack. To Alexis’ credit, she actually seemed irritated by the entire thing and dubious of what Earth Jesus was telling her she was required to do to raise his (he called them his, not their) children. Two years ago, she would have been nodding along vigorously. It’s slow progress in Alexis’ exceptionally uncomplicated brain, but it’s progress nonetheless, and for that I award her an imaginary gold star.

We then hopped back to the hospital to visit Tamra post-surgery, although Vicki didn’t make the jaunt with us, she merely called in by phone because she was at work. That ticked Tamra off, but I’m not really sure why – I’ve never gone to see a friend immediately after surgery, and when I had surgery a couple of years ago, I certainly didn’t tell anyone what time I’d be coming out of anesthesia so that they could come see me. Surgery’s kind of a serious thing, and besides the loved one who’s in charge of getting me home in my painkiller haze, I think everyone can stay home for a day or two until I get a chance to wash my hair. But hey, that’s just me. Gretchen showed up right on time, much to Tamra’s joy.

Finally we came to the bowling party, where Heather was far more concerned with the champagne she’d be serving than anything else. Gretchen invited her weird brunette friend and she brought her weird t-shirt-and-blazer-wearing boyfriend/husband, which didn’t seem to please Heather in the least. Vicki and all of her drama then arrived to distract everyone, but to my (and perhaps everyone’s) surprise, she managed to greet Gretchen and Slade without poking either of their eyes out.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of the Housewives suck at bowling. They’ve spent too many years eating only lettuce and all of their upper body muscles have atrophied, which means that the husbands all ruled the day. That left plenty of time for gossiping, particularly between Gretchen and her weird friend about, you guessed it, Vicki. Weird Brunette Friend then went to sit down with Vicki and made demands that Vicki talk with her, and to her credit, Vicki actually got up and tried to move away from the conversation instead of having a fight with someone who was visibly drunk and had just gotten out of a long gossip session with Gretchen.

Weird Brunette Friend was ready for a fight and she was going to pick one, one way or another, though. I don’t even like Vicki, but removing herself from the situation was the right thing to do. WBF followed Vicki wherever she went, though, slurring and hollering and making a scene because Vicki had the balls to answer, “I need to talk to you,” when asked by a drunken stranger, with and exasperated, “What do you want?” How dare she.

You’d think that’d be a pretty easy to end a fight that never started, but the drunk chick was so fixated and loud that even Gretchen had to give Vicki credit for not taking the bait and getting into a screaming match. There’s nothing less fun than trying to diffuse a situation when someone is visibly intoxicated, and on top of it, WBF is probably a few crayons short of a box even when she is sober. Eventually drunkie was restrained and Vicki was awarded her champagne and allowed to leave, but even after she had left, WBF wouldn’t stop complaining about the interaction to anyone who would stand still and make unfortunate, momentary eye contact with her. She’s around so much that it seems like she’s bucking for a spot on the show next season, and I sincerely hope she doesn’t get it.